The Pros And Cons Of Honey Bees

If you didn’t know, honeybees are dying rapidly, and it is more serious than you might think. The decline of the honeybee is fairly complicated, as we cannot simply target one cause for the honeybee’s decreasing numbers. The combination of factors includes parasitic mites, Colony Collapse Disorder, harmful pesticides, poor nutrition, and habitat loss, all of which have contributed to the loss of droves of honeybees. This issue much more important than what the attention it is getting implies, as honeybees are an essential part to the agricultural society, and the human race in general. Not only are bees responsible for making honey, but also for pollinating a large portion of crops grown around the world. If we did allow honeybees to disappear,

Since the late 1990s, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees, and report unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies. Bees do more than just make honey! Bee transfer pollen and seeds from one flower to another, fertilizing the plant so it can grow and produce food. Cross-pollination helps at least 30 percent of the world's crops and 90% affects our food. The sweet fruits humans eat such as, strawberries, mangoes, grapes, apples, and bananas would not be the same taste wise as they are now. We simply couldn’t live in the same world if it weren’t for the bees.

The colony collapse disorder has been threatening the United States for many years. Reports show excessive numbers of honeybees dying off. According to the Bee Informed Partnership and USDA’s annual survey, during the winter of 2013-2014, the mortality of managed honeybee colonies was 23.2. The previous winter’s report showed a loss of 30.5 percent of the colonies and thus, the winter 2013-2014 results might show some improvement. However, beekeepers persist that the still declining honeybee colonies are becoming too low for colony collapse disorder to be considered a solved issue. Approximately two-thirds of the beekeepers reported losses greater than the acceptable 18.9 percent mortality rate, thus deeming the losses greater than what is economically sustainable. The issue

Many people say that bees are accountable for one of every three bites of food we eat. In addition to plant pollination (crucial to crop growth), bees also provide people with many wax based products as well. Honeybees are singlehandedly one of the most important organisms in our ecosystem, however their efforts are often ignored. The bees are dying, and their mysterious disappearances are raising far less warning signs than needed. Colony collapse disorder has been an enormous concern for quite a while now, and it is only getting worse. Using multiple scholarly sources, the importance of CCD and bees will be brought to light throughout this paper. An introduction to the definition of colony collapse disorder will be looked at as an

Thesis: Without a change in policy and practice, honeybees may disappear, causing humans a dilemma that is much bigger than many understand.

American conglomerates such as Monsanto, Pioneer Seeds, and others, have created seeds that do not reproduce. Whereas these seeds have a lifespan of the crop chosen. The sterilizing of the plant by the means of sterilizing the flower pollen genetically altered and mutated for production in the agricultural industry. These seeds are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds, which farmers cannot replant, also to mention that the bees that are trying to collect pollen, found to have their digestive tract diseases, such as amoeba and nosema disease. According to Organic Consumers Association, bees are not even the only insects dying, “It's not just the bees that are dying. Butterfly and bird populations are in decline, too. And it's not just the neonicotinoids that are to blame. Other herbicides and pesticides, especially Monsanto's Roundup, used to grow GMO crops-and also used to contain weeds in cities and home gardens are decimating pollinators, fish and wildlife, and some would argue, humans too”(Katherine Paul 1). These diseases are mainly located in the digestive tract system. After studies of the autopsy, the most alarming trait is that the lower intestine and stinger have discolored to black vs. the normal opaque color, Synonymous with colon cancer in

Spivak explained that after WWII, American farmers began using pesticides and herbicides on a large scale that kill off the weeds that bees need for survival and started growing larger crop monocultures, like soybeans and corn. She also says that researchers from Penn State University have been looking at pesticide residue in the pollen that bees carry home as food, and have noticed that every batch of pollen they carry contains at least six detectable pesticides (Stankus,

In the past year the U.S has lost 44 percent of its honeybee colonies. Certain bee species are on the brink of extinction because of climate change and the resulting malnutrition. People don’t understand how a world without bees wouldn’t be good. Without bees, stores would have a hard time stocking honey, fruits, vegetables and dairy products. Scientist are looking for ways to help save the bees. The famous cereal, honey nut cheerios even decided to remove the familiar mascot to help draw attention to the problem.

Bees are one of nature’s biggest celebrities. They have been on the cover of Time magazine, written about in The New York Times, and featured in multiple documentaries with various celebrities. And there is good reason for it. Bees are responsible for the pollination of the majority of foods, including almonds, blueberries, avocados, and watermelons, as well as the pollination of many flowering landscape plants. Bees are a keystone species, and we need to rehabilitate their populations or face a serious change in the composition of our landscape and meals…which is not something I take lightly. Take away blueberries and avocados and I would have an anxiety attack. But my work is about much more than just saving the bees. It’s about biological

Honey bee management practices are very important in keeping the overall health and population of the honeybees stable, along with preventing the gene pool from becoming too similar.Beekeepers not taking proper care of the genetic biodiversity of the hives has been thought to contribute to CCD. A lack of genetic biodiversity can make bees increasingly susceptible to any pest/disease that invades a colony. Noncompliance with all homeowner association, and or federal ordinances, regulations, and laws pertaining to beekeeping, has a large potential to affect the overall honeybee population. (Ellis) Beekeepers often use chemicals within bee colonies in order to control diseases that the honeybees are exposed to. Although helpful, recent studies have shown that the use of common agricultural chemicals, also used by beekeepers, such as fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, and miticides can compromise the bees’ immune systems making it harder for

A few companies are also creating new pesticides that target pests harmful to honey bees. The EPA is working to expedite reviewing and testing of new products, such as pesticides that control Varroa Mites in beehives. The plan’s goal is to provide use of new, friendly products more swiftly. In addition to testing new products, the EPA is also re-evaluating current pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, to confirm their harmlessness to honey bees. The USDA and the EPA are working together to further determine the risks to pollinators using the harmonized risk assessment process. Until they can confirm the harmless effects on honey bees, they have halted the approved use of new outdoor neonicotinoid pesticides.

In the article “The Endangerment Of Bees And New Developments In Beekeeping: A Social Science Perspective Using The Example Of Germany” written by Stephan Lorenz, it’s said that the endangerment of bees is because of social causes. It gives two case studies that evaluate developments that are harmful or beneficial to bees, and study different methods of beekeeping and how it affects bees. Lorenz states that the endangerment of bees could be because of the careless use of insecticides, which kill bees when they try to pollinate plant species (Lorenz).

Nectar gets collected by the bees and then it gets broken down into simple sugars to be later on stored in the honeycomb. It's color and flavor varies, based on the type of nectar collected by the bees. Next, beekeepers harvest the honeycomb frames and “scrape off the wax cap that bees make to seal off honey in each cell” (National Honey Board, paragraph 2). After the beekeepers gather the honey, it is strained to get rid of any remaining wax and other particles. Last but not least, they bottle the honey into jars and label it, making them ready to be shipped to grocery stores worldwide.To raise bees, you first have to pick a location. It has to be in a place where it is not too hot, has access to fresh water near the hive, and is protected

During the past decade the presence of bee diseases, droughts and other variable weather conditions has reduced the supply of bees worldwide. In the United States for example, the past few years have seen bush-fires, droughts, the killer mite (Varroa destructor) and the Colony Collapse Disorder wreck havoc with U.S. honey crops by destroying nearly two-thirds of their colonies. This has lead to a market opportunity for other countries to sell their honey to the U.S., which happens to be the largest consumer (and 3rd largest importer) of honey worldwide.

Honey bees, feared by the misinformed and admired by the intelligent, are dying. The interest in bees from many environmentalists is not for a sudden cause, as this issue is not new to the world. Honey bees as a population have been in decline for years but have yet to reach the endangered species list anywhere in the United States except for Hawaii. Many people kill bees that buzz around joyfully, simply because they are afraid of being stung by them; however, a vast majority of bees do not sting and the others do not care. This unfortunate commonality is not even one of the top causes of the worldwide epidemic of honey bees. Although bees are jokingly idolized on the internet in pictures and videos as a result of a popular children’s movie, their population decline is in fact quite serious. Honey bees and other pollinators like birds and insects ensure the pollination of flowering plants and crops all around the globe. Not only do honey bees pollinate plants that produce the foods that humans eat, but they also pollinate trees that produce clean oxygen for Earth. Without honey bees, the world as we know it could soon end, due to carbon dioxide pollution and lack of farmable foods. The population of honeybees and other important pollinator-bee species is dwindling due to a dilemma known to scientists as colony collapse disorder (CCD) because of the use of bee-killing pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, the decrease of flower meadows in the world, and the general increase